The Hartford Stage production of Chick - The Great Osram — starring Robert Sella and Enid Graham — officially opens Oct. 19

Hartford artistic director Michael Wilson stages the new work at the Connecticut stage. Performances began Oct. 13 for the run that is scheduled through Nov. 11.

Based on the life and career of A. Everett "Chick" Austin, Jr., Chick, The Great Osram "reveals the complex and passionate man whose energy and romantic vision inspired, infuriated and entertained," according to production notes.

Sella plays the title character — a "passionate and rebellious new director," who in 1927 took the reins of Hartford's art museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum — opposite Graham as Austin's wife Helen.

Real-life couple Sella and Graham reprise their roles from the staged reading of the play, which was developed during the 2006 Brand:NEW Fall Festival of New Work.

The design team features Tony Straiges (scenic), Rui Rita (lighting), David C. Wollard (costumes) and John Gromada (sound and original music). Sella has appeared on Broadway in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Side Man, Cabaret and My Fair Lady and Off-Broadway in Stuff Happens, Five By Tenn, Boys and Girls, Kit Marlowe and Kean. He recently performed in the London revival of Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque starring Maggie Smith.

Seen on Broadway in The Constant Wife, Dinner at Eight, Fortune's Fool and Honour, Graham has also appeared Off-Broadway in The Long Christmas Ride Home, Psych, Crimes of the Heart, The Turn of the Screw, As Bees in Honey Drown and All's Well That Ends Well. She has also been seen at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Romeo and Juliet and Light Up the Sky.

Playwright Grimm has penned Measure for Pleasure, Kit Marlowe and Sheridan, or, Schooled In Scandal as well as the forthcoming Steve and Idi. He also translated and adapted The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue from Molière's Les Femmes Savantes.